As the bells of Liverpool Parish Church pealed out 96 times to commemorate the fans killed in the Hillsborough football tragedy, there was little more than the hum of roadside traffic outside the actual place itself yesterday.

As a neutral venue, Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough ground played host to the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on that fateful day on April 15 1989.

Yesterday a few mementos rested on top of the grey stone memorial which stands outside the ground on Parkside Road, framed by a crescent of bright red football scarves – both Liverpool and Forest. Visitors to the memorial came in ones and twos, standing in silence, heads bowed. The space took on the role of an open-air chapel as it often has in the past.

Leslie Brookes was one of those who had come to pay his respects. Originally from Mansfield and now living in Chapeltown in the north of Sheffield, he is a lifelong Liverpool fan and was at the match in 1989. He says:

It was just horrible, horrific. I hope to God I never see anything like it again.

He was relieved rather than glad at the news unfolding from the independent panel's report.

It's just a relief for the families that they can't blame their children. They were just innocent people out at a football match.

Local Sheffield photographer Rob Knight was a 14-year-old Nottingham Forest fan back in 1989. He too was in the ground for the game.There was "a nervous feeling in the air" just before kick-off he says. When the penny dropped that something serious was happening in the Liverpool stands the atmosphere in the ground went "strangely numb" with none of the usual football crowd banter.

He says it was still hard to fully take-in what was happening. "There was an information vacuum, but you could tell it wasn't hooliganism". He remembers "the sombrest" coach ride back to Nottingham. In those days, Rob carried a small transistor radio to matches. He says a lot of the reports on the way home were about fighting

which was confusing as it's not what we saw. We didn't realise until we got home exactly what had happened.

One man who did realise was John Highfield. Back then he was a young reporter on the Sheffield Starhurriedly sent to cover the unfolding disaster as editors in his newsroom watching the television saw football coverage gave way to carnage. He says:

I got there as it was happening. There was an enormous crowd on Leppings Lane. I managed to get through it somehow and ended up on the pitch. There were people being hauled over the fences and others dying on the pitch. It was absolutely horrifying. Bodies were laid on advertising hoardings which they were using as makeshift stretchers. I remember this guy just beating his hand into a wall, sobbing.

The nearby terraced homes were engulfed by the tragedy. John remembers all the doors being open as residents invited distraught fans into their homes to use the phone, telling loved ones they were still alive, or breaking the terrible news that others were not.

One of the current Labour councillors for Hillsborough, Bob Johnson, grew up near the ground and has similar recollections of the local community rallying round. He remembers three young lads who were "sat in our front room drinking tea, sobbing having phoned their parents". They had started the day as a quartet.

He says the "empathy" local residents have with the families and fans "both in the days and weeks following the disaster and even to this day" means that the Hillsborough families' quest for truth and justice continues to find solidarity across the Pennines too.

Kevin Meagher chaired the Mayor4Sheffield campaign and was a strategist in the Yes for the North West regional assembly campaign in 2004